Top Ten Things We Learned in our First Week Driving the Silver Squid Across the Country

After selling our 2009 white Jetta, and picking up a 2013 GMC 2500 diesel in Utica, NY, we gathered the kids in New Jersey, and redirected to Nashua, NH, where our 27-foot International Serenity Airstream awaited. Staying with my stepsister, and good friends Andrew and Annette in their sweet little treehouse just outside Walpole.

Goal being to cross the country back to Alaska in this self-contained aluminum sausage once used by NASA to isolate astronauts returned from the moon. Covid begone.

To accomplish this plan we looked to a program called Harvest Hosts. Pay $67 a year, and you can stay at any number of farms, breweries, and museums across the country. To believe the photos, you spend a lot of time sleeping in fields – ideal for social distancing, which is critical, considering that Rachel is pregnant.

So here we are, a week later. I’m sitting at a picnic table at the Ohio Caverns beneath a maple tree, just outside of West Liberty, Ohio. Population 1200. A citronella candle burns. It’s 77 degrees. The candle flickers across the silver skin of the RV. After dinner beneath the rear hatch, we put our two very tired children to sleep.

As I look at it now, in the last of the sunlight, the Airstream resembles nothing more than a sleek, 50s-era toaster oven. As if, at any moment, two van-sized pieces of WonderBread might pop out.

Over the past week we’ve clocked just over a thousand miles in the Silver Squid, as the girls have taken to calling her. (The truck is the “Blue Moose.”) New Hampshire, through Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, touching the northern tip of West Virginia, to Ohio. 35 minutes from Jackson Center, where Airstreams are built.

Our model has issues. More about that in a moment.

But first, our top ten takeaways from driving this toaster oven across this great, troubled land.

10. Whenever possible, avoid situations that require you to back up

Obviously, if you grew up slipping tractor trailers into loading bays, this doesn’t apply to you. Having owned a skiff, working in construction, I’ve done my time backing up trailers. The Silver Squid is a different beast. It has heft. It does not turn easy.

We spent June 30th, our first night with the Airstream just outside Brattleboro, on the Robb Maple farm, which has been in operation since 1907. Mr. Robb, whose sons now run the maple production, recalls collecting sap on horseback. Taking wooden pails hanging from iron spigots, and filling a red wooden sap collector, which now sits in the family maple shop. 

We were the Robbs’ fifth Harvest Host guest. We rolled into their bucolic, shaded farm. Helen Robb directed us into her driveway. We chatted. She promised a tour of the maple syrup production in the morning. Then she asked if we could back out of her narrow driveway without plowing down her mailbox. Sure. No problem. 

Perhaps confident in our skills, she pointed us toward a lovely field already lit up with fireflies. Situated just across from the sugar shack, where she promised to meet us the next morning.

Eager to get into our new Airstream beds, we scarfed down the Thai takeout from Keene, and promptly fell asleep, lulled by the rhythmic zapping of the electric fence on all four sides of us, to keep the cows contained.

I woke early. Took a run along the gravel road. Fire trucks passed me, their lights on but no sirens. The girls rose, and we took our tour, bearing witness to the polished Canadian sap distiller, superior to the Vermont model, according Mr. Robb told us. The VT rig couldn’t keep up with production from nearly 400 acres of sugar maple sap vacuumed out of the trees.

It came time to leave. We told the kids no maple gelato, for the love they had just ingested about half a bottle of Grade B syrup – which these days goes by the term “robust,” Helen told us, with a note of disappointment in her voice. (“No one wants to put Grade B on their pancakes anymore, even though it’s been boiled longer, and has less sugar.”)

From across the street I could hear the popping of the electric fence.

“Kids. We have a long trip. Let’s get going,” I said, already calculating vectors.

A U-turn in the rectangle was not going to work, as Helen suggested. To add to the drama, a little bridge was just behind the enclosure, which meant we’d have to back up between the aluminum guardrails – that is, if we even made it out of the square without going up in flames, all of us inside kabobbed inside by the electric fence.

I hadn’t even dared unhitch, still leery of the trunnion bars, apparently called an “A frame,” used to hitch larger tows.

We got everyone buckled in, and I started backing out. Immediately the Airstream jacknifed toward an electric fence. The cows looked up – one synchronized surprised bovine organism. I tried to straighten out, all-the-while cursing Airstream for their promised camera on the back, which apparently couldn’t sync with our older truck.

Helen came out on her porch to watch. Then her husband. Her son waited in the road, in his truck, with a trailer full of hay. The fire trucks on their way back to Brattleboro after a tree came down further up the gravel road waited. We wiggled and waggled, avoiding at all costs that dang fence. Finally threading the two cedar posts out of there.

Never had it felt so good to put a vehicle into Drive.

9. Know the clearance of your RV. 

We drove across Vermont, through a number of sudden deluges, then southwest to Donaldson’s Farms, in Hackettstown, NJ. It was a big bite of interstate, enabled by squeezable yogurts purchased at the Brattleboro Co-op – which came at the cost of braving the righteous attitude in that beautifully-stocked store. However, they did have black pads that turned rainbow when you scratched them with a pencil. That bought us a good 75 miles a pop. Funny how when you’re on the road with a three and five-year-old you measure objects in miles.

We approached Hackettstown at just after nine in the evening. The directions brought us down a small hill. And there at the bottom was a tunnel beneath railroad tracks. 10’8″. At the time we didn’t even think, just busted through. It was only the following morning, coming back, that we scrambled to Google the height of the International Serenity Airstream – which was 9’9″ with the AC. I watched in the mirror as we cleared by inches.

Best to know this before.

8. Don’t take long showers in your RV unless your drain line is hooked up

You’d think this would be, like, RV For Dummies. But it’s not. Because after two nights of “boondocking” – that’s RV-speak for sleeping out, unhooked from electric and water – there’s the spirit of pulling into an RV park, and just hitting the systems. Hard. AC. Hot water. Showering, shaving, all of it.

So it was with us. Despite being just two days out boondocking, we rolled into the Hershey Park Camping area on Sweet Street eager to turn on that faucet, and lather up, heedless of water filling up the tanks.

Situated along Lazy River, just below train tracks that the woman at the entrance told us brought in all the cocoa for the Hershey factory, the campground was crowded for the holiday weekend. We pulled into our spot, #194, threading between two much larger RVs, with crazy extending bump-outs.

A guy from an RV bigger than a Greyhound helped me move the fire-pit and picnic table to the side. Across from us I saw two Airstreams, one that had to be from the 60s, aged nicely, with the sloped curves of a Citroen Deux Chevaux.

Plugged into shore power and city water, we felt like RV Gods, and all took long showers – except that I had been a compulsive reader of Airstream Addicts, a Facebook site with extensive commentary, where the prevailing opinion was to allow the tanks to fill, rather than dumping outright. So – we didn’t hook up our drains to the dumping spot.

Which meant that all of the sudden the water level in the shower was coming up at my ankles. Fast. We had filled the grey water tank. Not cool, dude. Not cool at all.

7. Feed your children

This would seem like a good rule to follow in all circumstances. However, when you’re trying to make it to appointed destinations, you get tunnel vision, and sometimes forget. Forgive us, OCS.

Nothing will make you more miserable than a hungry child. Just as games can be measured in miles, so food can as well. It is a critical part of the equation of a kids’ happiness. Father of two, soon to be three, you’d think I realize this. But I have a kid – Kiki – who needs food constantly. Like, if she’s not chewing something, she starts to get nervous.

The day after Nashua, we crammed too much in. Along with the Brattleboro Co-op, where a bunned spice distributor told me to stand farther away please for his safety, then closer so that I could tell him if I wanted more or less turmeric, we went to Target for bedding and kitchen stuff, and also to Walmart for diesel exhaust fluid (more on that in a moment) and leveling blocks and chocks so our RV wouldn’t roll away. Also so we could kind of look like we knew what we were doing.

We paid dearly for our tunnel vision. Kiki’s moans echoed through the truck as we watched each tenth of a mile tick by. I’m talking Ugolino “Inferno” level of starving, like we’re eating our fingers – even though she had eaten an apple sauce just an hour ago.

The flipside of this was the Hershey factory. The kids had to get their temperatures checked, but it was worth it. We took the rides. They got Hershey bars. And all, for a little while, was good in the world.

6. Never arrive at an RV camp on the Fourth of July without Fourth of July lights, or camping chairs, or, well, really anything other than your RV you’re pulling

Just don’t do it. It’s unacceptable. Not only did we not have Fourth of July lights, or pink flamingoes to stick in the gravel, or a slinky required to create the proper slope to usher your blackwater to the dumping area, but we didn’t have foldable beach chairs. Instead, we pulled two broken wooden chairs my mother had given us to take to Alaska. We set them up on a patch of blue rug. We were like the Amish Airstreamers, peeling corn in our straight-backed chairs. In the dark.

5. Give your children Airstream arrival and departure jobs

Before we go anywhere, it is Kiki’s job to latch the shower door shut, and plug the drain so grey water doesn’t splash up. It’s Haley’s job to switch off the pump and drain the toilet, putting down the toilet seat so the blackwater doesn’t splash up. So help you if you try and do their jobs. They will scream holy hell. Kiki also likes hooking up the drain hose. We need to get her little gloves to do so.

When we arrive at a site, Haley likes to help unhitch. Kiki likes putting down the stabilizers, making sure the bubble is in the exact center, meaning we’re level front and back, and side to side. If that bubble is not smack-dead in the middle, Haley will let you know. No one rests until we’re level.

4. Pee lightly

Earlier today, shortly before pulling into the beautiful Ohio Caverns, we got busted for letting the girls pee outside beneath one of the maples. Eric, the man who runs the cave, was generous not to say anything, but he did come up to chat about his Winnebago, and the history of the cave. And, I think, generally scope us out.

But man – those gallons in the blackwater tank are precious. Our solar takes care of the battery pretty good, and grey water doesn’t fill up too fast, especially when we give the girls outside showers. But the blackwater. That’s where we all get hit hard. I know it’s not pretty to talk about. But that’s how it is. Not being able to go into public restrooms – or at least trying to avoid them – doesn’t make life in an Airstream easier.

3. Cook nice meals at Service Areas

It really is the coolest thing ever. In West Virginia, we pulled over at a service area, parked by the curb, just across from the tractor trailers, and made a full-on dinner of ravioli and pesto, courtesy of the haughty Brattleboro Co-op. Shut the door to the rumble of the trucks, and had a cheap, good meal. As we pulled out, Rachel and I looked at each other. 

“That was just as I imagined it,” I told her. “Cooking at a Service Area.”

“I know. It almost seems too easy.”

2. Don’t travel in the Airstream while under way

I had this image of driving the truck, listening to my Russian children’s stories and podcasts while Rachel taught homeschool in the back.

Not only is it illegal in certain states, it’s just not smart. Airstreams get bumpy. There are no seatbelts. The glass isn’t tempered. I’ve seen photos of crashed Airstreams. Not pretty. They crumple like, well, tin cans. Glass everywhere.

So truck it is. Just a little background screeching to the podcasts. Plus Rachel’s navigating help.

And Number One …

1. Have some really good friends and family along the route

To put you up while you’re waiting to pick up your Airstream. To pick garlic in the garden. Thank you to Andrew and Annette in New Hampshire, and my sis Jenine in New York. And also to Amy Butcher. 

Amy teaches Creative Writing at Ohio Wesleyan University. We met in Sitka, where we teach at the Sitka Fine Arts Camp each summer. She is a dear friend, and kindly invited us to visit her at her sweet home in the Northwest neighborhood of Delaware. She lives across from an elementary school, which is in the process of building a parking lot beside Amy’s house. Which, at the moment, is an empty lot, ideal for an Airstream.

We had a long travel day between Hershey, PA, and Delaware, OH. We pulled in just before midnight, July 3rd. R and I chatted, and decided to keep the kids in the Airstream, where they had grown comfortable, with the idea of visiting with Amy and her three dogs the next morning.

So it was. Kiki popped right up, then Haley, and the two of them trotted over, intent on getting to know all three canines, with an emphasis on the puppy Basil, who – thank god – Amy had decided to adopt, saving us from adding yet another addition to our roving circus. Under the surveillance of a dead woman on a swing, we did about a week’s worth of laundry, taking great care to keep the light on, and not letting the kids in the basement. We purchased some modest fireworks, and sat in Amy’s beautiful little garden, trying to convince Kiki she wouldn’t burn her hands off with a sparkler.

BONUS LESSONS!

Your diesel vehicle needs DEF! Otherwise it won’t go! 

Do you know what diesel exhaust fluid is? I certainly didn’t, despite driving a diesel for five years as a contractor.

A sign flashed up on our dash, telling us that if we didn’t put diesel exhaust into the truck, our speed would be docked to 65 mph. After that, it would drop down to 35. Then four. At which point, we might as well walk.

As my friend Brian Russell explained, DEF is urea and water, and is used to reduce pollution in the engine. We purchased two jugs at Walmart, and the girls helped me put it in at Donaldson’s Farms. This constituted our morning homeschool class. How to fill the truck with DEF, making cleaner exhaust. Also, how to keep your truck moving forward.

Buy cookware! 

We actually did this, but Amazon shipped late. So we ended up boiling water in a sawed off can of Bud Light for our first night on the road. Just sayin’. Best to buy things ahead of time. 

And there you have it! Stay tuned for more, as we check out the Airstream factory, and head into the hot south during hurricane season. New Orleans our next destination.